


Zero doesn't express absence (or sorrow)

by Analinea



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Claudia Stilinski Feels, Happy Ending, M/M, Nightmare, mostly canon compliant to 6a, no idea how to tag this thing, quotes from book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 02:37:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9637205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea
Summary: Stiles meets Derek.He meets Derek a number of times: in the woods, lurking in shadows, in his room.It seems to him that it's always the first time, because he never gets the same feeling from the guy. Bad guy, anti-hero, asshole, anxious, tough, caring.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story is an involuntary colab with a French author that doesn't know I exist xD  
> Meaning: title and _quotes_ in the text are from a book called No et moi (title in English is direct translation, so "No and me" if you're interested) by Delphine de Vigan.
> 
> It's one of my fav books, the quotes are in English on goodread and I got the idea to use them in this because they were oddly fitting. Title is translated by me so idk how accurate it is haha  
> The book has barely anything in common with Teen Wolf or my fic, but it's still an awesome read so go for it guys!
> 
>  
> 
> **And after this I'm writing two fluffy stories, I promise, I already have the ideas and all!**

► _Before I met No I thought that violence meant shouting and hitting and war and blood. Now I know that there can also be violence in silence and that it’s sometimes invisible to the naked eye. There’s violence in the time that conceals wounds, the relentless succession of days, the impossibility of turning back the clock. Violence is what escapes us. It’s silent and hidden. Violence is what remains inexplicable, what stays forever opaque..._  
  
_My mother stands there at the living room door with her arms by her sides. And I think that there's violence in that too - in her inability to reach out to me, to make the gesture which is impossible and so forever suspended._ **◄**

 

Stiles can't help the hard flinch that pushes him more into the wall. It's a normal reaction, a perfectly normal reaction, he tells himself, because who wouldn't be scared to see their own best friend come at them so angry, fist raised?

They've known each other for so long, Scott and him, they've been mad at each other before. It's the first time Stiles' afraid though.

He swallows hard, still pressed to the wall after Scott runs off with a quick apology. His heart beats wildly in his chest and he closes his eyes against the onslaught of memories, his mother's hard slap on the face that sent him hitting the counter.

Caring hand turned into pain, bruises, tears he never shed to prove he could stay strong or maybe so he didn't make her more angry with him than she already was that night.

His dad had made him sleep at Heather's.

Stiles knew it was to protect him but a voice in his mind convinced him it was because everything was his fault.

Stiles still remembers, but never dwells because it's too much sometimes, and seriously bless his ADHD brain in these moments because for a moment he can pretend -pretend that his mind goes off on a tangent of thoughts leading him far away from memory loss and insults.

It's still there; in the lump in his throat and his shaking hands, fake smile, tears in his eyes, trembling breath, the list goes on and on he knows. He spent an entire night cataloging the after effects of heartbreak once.

As long as he doesn't have a panic attack, he's good.

He ends up having one anyway, hates himself for it because his dad just got home from work and doesn't need his trouble of a kid starting with this again. Those are not his father's words, they are Stiles'. They still take a Sheriff's voice and ring true, so Stiles doesn't know anymore.

It takes a while for the shaking to stop. He welcomes gratefully the exhaustion that makes him fall asleep before dinner.

When he wakes up, they'll pretend nothing happened. His dad and him, they won't talk about it.

About the shortness of breath, the dementia, the rare violence, the grief.

They won't talk either of the sunny days basking in the sun, the rainy days curling up on the couch, the laughs and the happiness.

They never talk about Claudia. Never mention her name.

 

► _Those moments aren't ours any more. They're shut up in a box, buried at the back of a cupboard, out of reach. They're frozen like on a postcard or a calendar. The colors will end up disappearing, fading. They're forbidden to our memories and our words._ **◄**

 

Stiles meets Derek.

He meets Derek a number of times: in the woods, lurking in shadows, in his room.

It seems to him that it's always the first time, because he never gets the same feeling from the guy. Bad guy, anti-hero, asshole, anxious, tough, caring.

Derek pushes him against walls, and for the first time maybe Stiles is too distracted by the mystery in front of him to think about past violence and harsh words. He will think about it later, though, but at the time he can only look Derek's eyes, lips, try to understand him. Pin him with his eyes on a mental board full of red strings.

Derek is alternatively something to solve and something to help.

Then he is both at once.

Then he just becomes something to care about.

Derek doesn't use his words, and that should put him and Stiles on opposite sides of everything; but there's something in both their eyes that make them look at the world in a similar way. Hues of gray, bright spot for people to protect, and the rest...

Anyway, Stiles talks and talks for the same reason as Derek doesn't; the most important things are left unsaid, always.

So, Stiles keeps meeting Derek, at the same rate as they save each other's lives and isn't that scary.

Scott draws away slowly, but Stiles isn't worried about it, just hurt. He knows they'll find their way back to each other eventually. Apologize, forgive, forget, do better next time. That's how it works between them. Is that how it works between siblings?

Stiles wouldn't know.

He doesn't dare asking Derek about it.

But he still dares a lot of things. He questions, prods and tries casual touches and learns Derek's boundaries.

Stiles loses a lot of things along the way: his innocence; the only person that was there when his mom was sick; his control; his dad almost, multiple times in multiple ways; friends. In his worst days he's convinced it wasn't worth it.

In his better days, he's grateful it gave him a bigger family. And Derek.

 

► _If you consider that a single straight line can be drawn between any two points, one day I'm going to draw a line from him to me or me to him._ **◄**

 

He's on the ground, spitting blood that didn't come from him biting his cheek. His body aches, bone marrow turned to pain, skin as fragile as paper.

Sometimes, Stiles thinks that humans are as strong as they are breakable, and that's their tragedy.

He doesn't feel strong, right now, just breakable in every sense of the world because the hurt isn't only physical.

This isn't like Gerard's basement.

On the other side of the hits and the words, it was his father. And once he was done, he just left him there to rot and die, or the other way around; because his mother and Allison and, and, and, Heather too, god he can still hear her laugh and her soothing words when they shared a bed in her family's tiny apartment.

He's come to prefer little homes after that because his is only filled with empty spaces and silence while Heather's was a comforting nest wrapped around him like a warm blanket. He hated himself for a long time, to prefer going to her place rather than go home.

Maybe that's why he chose to distance himself from her when they went to different schools, lose a sister, meet Scott, get a brother that had no idea.

And now she's dead.

It hurts, so much more than the bruises forming on his body and the broken bones and the split skin.

They're all dead, and his dad hates him. This is what he deserves.

He loses time, wakes up in the darkest place he's even been in. It's too– he can't move, he can't– can't breathe, he's buried–

 

He wakes up screaming. His father's arms around him aren't there to hurt, to bruise, his voice isn't angry. It's scared and trying to comfort him. Stiles feels himself calming like he's far away from his own body.

He quiets down, eventually. He won't fall asleep again tonight.

 

► _Now I know without a shadow of doubt that you can't chase away those images, let alone the visible holes that burrow deep down inside. You can't chase away the reverberations or the memories that stir as night falls or in the early hours. You can't chase away echoing screams, still less echoing silence._ **◄**

 

Stiles thinks about how life is sometimes. Doesn't let you rest.

One minute you're counting the days since the last incident, the next you're scratching at your face to get the– the _things_ off of it.

He doesn't even know what they are, bugs or spirits or monsters, maybe the dead come to eat him off the face of the earth. All he knows is the sting and itch of them crawling on and under his skin. He can't hear himself screaming or feel himself writhing.

He'll learn about what happened later, extrapolate and let the night give him pictures of it that are probably much worse than reality. Imagination can run wild and be way too vivid, Stiles knows. It was the fox's weapon of choice.

So he pictures this: Scott trying to hold on his flailing feet, Derek trying to carry him under the arms and grip his wrists at the same time to stop him from clawing at his own face already bloodied, his own desperate yells of “get them off me!” over Derek shouting at Deaton to “fucking do something!”

After that it's quite boring, really, Deaton checking him over and finding the antidote -Stiles was _poisoned_ \- but the part Stiles is most unsure about is the way Derek looked while pressing Stiles down into the table.

Anyway, Stiles now knows that someone targeted him with wolfsbane -and that's bullshit because he googled aconite poisoning a long time ago and it doesn't look like that so there's words to be had with the vet. He always seemed shady, but he saved Stiles so why would he lie about the poison?

That's a thought to file away for later, though, because now in the darkness of his room...

There's Derek.

Stiles chooses to stop thinking about it too much. Derek offers, Stiles takes. He'll take and take for as long as Derek offers, however short of a time this might last.

He's used to dealing in heartbreaks anyway, so he figures: is there much left to break of him anyway?

 

► _In books there are chapters to separate out the moments, to show that time is going by and things are changing, and sometimes the parts even have titles that are full of promise—'The Meeting', 'Hope', 'Downfall'—like paintings do. But in life there's nothing like that, no titles or signs or warnings, nothing to say 'Beware, danger!' or 'Frequent landslides' or 'Disillusion ahead'. In life you stand all alone in your costume, and too bad if it's in tatters._ **◄**

 

Sometimes Stiles just want to get away from everything.

He wants to run and run as fast as the wolves can, leave Beacon Hills behind and if this city is hell maybe along the way he'll find heaven.

Or, no, he's not that hopeful, not kidding himself, but he just think that there's something close to happiness away from here.

Isn't that a way to understand the Churchill quote Morell said to him once?

God, she was an lame counselor, but then she was more of a druid than an expert on psychology.

Back to leaving.

The thing is, it's not just wishful thinking, not just a 'the grass is greener' type of thing, because he has proof. Derek left once and came back and he must have found something on the way; some kind of _haven_.

He's softer, and Stiles thinks that if Derek were to be an Alpha now he would be a better one. It's a sad thought because of the people left behind that'll never get to be better anythings, but Stiles ignores the grief and the bitterness just to think about what that means.

That means there's good places outside of this town. Of this life.

Whole other cities, countries, continents. Isn't that something, how big the world is? Surely one day Stiles will find a place to settle in that won't have that much pain soaking the ground. Surely, he's not cursed, surely it won't follow him beyond the county limits.

Derek thought he was cursed once, he told Stiles.

This is proof.

Hell comes again and again and Stiles is left only a shadow of himself.

Derek stays. He's used to ashes so he's not afraid to touch those. He's not afraid to touch Stiles and help him rebuild himself.

Stiles gets– gets...better is not the word, just the one he uses for the benefit of everyone else. He gets okay.

When the next storm hits, he's ready and strong, he faces the winds.

That's what he tells himself anyway to deny the fact that it's more like heavy waters eroding the rocks until there's canyons to mark its passage. He tries to fill the holes every time but the scars are still there.

But he survives, and more than that, he _lives_. He keeps going, keeps caring, keeps loving.

 

So, all of this leading to this: him strong enough to stand on his own next to Scott, him knowing that the world is a better place almost everywhere else. Him watching Derek's retreating back and not getting in the way of his journey to nicer lands.

They'll find each other again he's certain of that, because Derek promised. And then he smiled the secret smile. The one for Stiles.

 

► _I don't go after him. He's a funny sort of boy. I've known that from the start. Not just because he seems angry and contemptuous or the way he walks like a tough guy. Because of his smile - it's a child's smile._ **◄**

 

Stiles ponders a lot on his gray vision of the world. He wonders how Scott could stand to be near him all this time, staining him with this darkness.

Stiles is very aware of the way he looks at Scott sometimes, like a light in a dark room, like the stars shining down on their tiny earth.

It doesn't sum up all his feelings on Scott because it would be unhealthy to idolize him like that. Scott is a pain in the ass too, he used to be oblivious and self-centered, he's too righteous, too willing to see the good in people, assholish at times and way too prone to forget about stuff.

But he's still an Alpha, still very much human too, better than Stiles, more forgiving. It's both flaws and qualities, and Stiles isn't perfect anyway so it works.

It works, it works, until it doesn't.

Stiles is an asshole too, and he bitches and whines a lot, always ready to get into trouble just for the kick of it -used to anyway, now trouble finds him when he doesn't want it to. He lies and he knows that inside of his heart there's the same kind of violence that his mother unleashed on him once.

He hides it, though, because he knows about his dad's scars and he remembers: once after the funeral, John Stilinski raised his hand ready to slap Stiles. He froze, looked down at his terrified kid protecting his face with his tiny arms, and broke down sobbing. The next day the bottles were gone.

Stiles will never forget the look on his dad's face that night, the horror, the guilt, the self-hatred.

He knows about abuse victims and patterns, and he doesn't want his dad to think that this is in their genes, inevitable.

Stiles won't let himself be the product of violence and dementia.

He can't be like Scott either.

 

He figures finally, after years of doubts, he's just _himself_. That has to be enough somehow, because being himself has saved lives. Being a good person isn't what's inside of your mind, it's what you _do_ , right?

Being himself has recognized evil in others too, even if no one listened to him. That has to be enough, even if he can't break that particular pattern of being ignored and then being proven right.

That has to be enough, because it leads to him with blood on his hands and a life lost and him being relieved by it, thinking “good”, and next thing he knows he's under the rain face to face with Scott, lies being uncovered but the words aren't coming out of his mouth right, there's pieces missing.

There's an easy explanation ready, the truth for once, a reality that won't let Scott hate him because it's actually self-defense he _knows_ it.

After Scott flinches and sends him away, when Stiles is alone and full of emotions that he doesn't want to name, he understands why the words didn't get out.

He didn't want Scott to excuse him this time. He wanted Scott to finally acknowledge the wrongness of him, to kick him out, to finally get rid of Stiles' darkness that was slowly spreading on the paper and affecting them all.

After the fact, Stiles feel hollow. Detached. He's so far away from himself but still stuck in the same place. Stories repeating themselves over and over.

Never breaking the pattern.

Never being heard.

 

► _All my life I've felt on the outside wherever I am - out of the picture, the conversation, at a distance, as though I were the only one able to hear the sounds or words that other's can't, and deaf to the words that they hear. As if I'm outside the frame, on the other side of a huge, invisible window._ **◄**

 

Things get better, eventually. Big bads are defeated, good guys get out of it mostly alive and whole.

Kira comes back just in time for graduation.

Stiles tries not to think about someone else that's still missing from the picture.

Things change. They've got one last summer together, the old and the young pack, the in-between. They won't lose touch, probably. Scott and Stiles, never. They just got each other back, after all.

Lydia will be her amazing self somewhere, get the peace that she deserves in a place that doesn't make her scream all the time. Maybe she'll find Danny and Jackson and Isaac on the way, the ones that got away.

Malia wants to take a year to figure things out, a time she never really had when they were always attacked.

Stiles wanted to stay with Scott. He had this whole thing planned for the both of them. He also had this anxiety and crushing fear of losing more people, be it to death or to life. But now he knows: they've got paths to take that won't be the same anymore, but will cross and run next to each other.

Things change. It's for the best.

But first they enjoy a summer of normalcy. Their first one in a long time.

They roast marshmallows and talk under the stars, jump into the lake at midnight and laugh, laugh, laugh.

Fall asleep right there in the warm air, hair damp, smiles on their faces. The crickets and the frogs are a nice soundtrack over the crackling of the fire. Stiles imagines fairies are dancing around them, but then he finds the thought too cheesy so he abandons it.

Instead, he closes his eyes, and join the others in dreams.

 

► _But sometimes the night reveals the only truth that time passes and things will never be seen the same again._ **◄**

 

Derek comes back.

It's as simple as that. He promised, after all.

He helps Stiles pack his stuff, drives with him to the other side of the country. Wind in his hair, sun warming his skin, radio softly playing music, landscapes moving around them.

It's a beginning, and a good one.

Finding haven.

And Derek's arms, again.

 

► _And when he catches me looking at him, he gives me this incredibly sweet, calm smile, and I think that we've got our lives ahead of us, our whole lives._ **◄**

 

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus - quote that fits Derek but didn't fit in the story:  
>  _“I’m not too keen on talking. I always have the feeling that the words are getting away from me, escaping and scattering. It’s not to do with vocabulary or meanings, because I know quite a lot of words, but when I come out with them they get confused and scattered. That’s why I avoid stories and speeches and just stick to answering the questions I’m asked. All the extra words, the overflow, I keep to myself, the words that I silently multiply to get close to the truth.”_
> 
>  
> 
> **What did you think? If you don't have time to comment, consider leaving a kudo :)**


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